First Published in 2002. It is easy to see that we are living in a time of rapid and radical social change. It is much less easy to grasp the fact that such change will inevitably affect the nature of those disciplines that both reflect our society and help to shape it. Yet this is nowhere more apparent than in the central field of what may, in general terms, be called literary studies. ‘New Accents’ is intended as a positive response to the initiative offered by such a situation. Each volume in the series will seek to encourage rather than resist the process of change. To stretch rather than reinforce the boundaries that currently define literature and its academic study.

Introduction; Chapter 1 Physiology and Fantasy; Chapter 2 Sexuality at the Edge of the Abyss; Chapter 3 Erotic Sainthood and the Search for Self-Annihilation; Chapter 4 Two Sexual Lives, Entrepreneurial and Compulsive; Chapter 5 Sexuality and the Life Force; Chapter 6 Sexuality and Self-Fulfillment; Chapter 7 Performative Sex and the Values of a Consumerist Culture; Chapter 8 Conclusion;